Jay Ellis Of ‘Insecure’ Says A Fan Cursed Him Out Once Because Of His Character

Although many dream of the limelight and what the fabulous life of a working actor on a hit series is like, it’s actually not always as sweet as one would think. Just ask Jay Ellis. The actor who plays the role of Lawrence on Insecure is learning first-hand that some people simply can’t separate actors from their fictional characters.

During a recent interview with the “Ebro In The Morning” crew, the 35-year-old actor emptied his memory bank and detailed some hilarious yet disturbing stories about aggressive fans approaching as if he were actually Lawrence.

“I had somebody yell ‘fu*k you’ at me a couple of days ago. Like literally screaming from across the street and then storming up to me in my face. ‘You ain’t sh*t, you’re never going to be shi*t, you wasn’t sh*t when…’ and I’m like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa!’” he said. “At the end, I was like, ‘You realize that’s just TV right?’ and she’s like, ‘You’re looking into my soul right now.’”

Ellis went on to say that the reliability of the show’s storyline and it’s characters is a main factor into viewers feeling as if it’s real life being played out on their televisions every Sunday night.

“We’ll table read four or five, six of the episodes ahead of the time,” he shared. “They throw a hook at us. We don’t see the last episode until the week before usually. Our writers will start in the fall, they’ll write for about four or five months. Issa has an idea, has a vision of the things she wants to explore this season. Her and our showrunner, Prentice Penny, they sit down and hash those out a little bit more. They bring all our writers in, they talk about ideas, they pitch different ideas. Pretty much everything that you are seeing this season has happened to one of our writers or to someone very close to one of our writers or even to Yvonne [Orji] or myself.”